You were told that if you worked hard enough, you would eventually arrive somewhere calm. This is an honest attempt at answering how to find real peace once you have already tried the roads you were given — the freedom, the degree, the better salary, the move abroad. Start here if you have been tired for years and cannot say why.
There is a particular sound a Lagos morning makes. A generator coughing itself awake in the compound. The notification chime of the family WhatsApp group before you have even sat up. You wash, you dress, you get into traffic, and the run begins again. We call it hustle, and we treat it as a virtue. But most of us know, if we are honest at two in the morning, that it is also a search — for something we have never had, which the things we already have have not given us.
The paths we were promised Political freedom, first. Independence was to bring peace; the military years would end and the nation would exhale. It has been decades since, and many of us are still frightened of our own government, and of one another. Nobody in the street calls this freedom a failure; they call it unfinished.
Education, next. Your parents sold land and trusted God for school fees so that you would not struggle the way they did. The certificate is on the wall. So is the underemployment, and the degree you drive with.
A better standard of living. The TV, the roof, the school fees paid on time. Every one of them won at real cost, and the house is quiet when you get home.
And a fourth path we hardly discuss any more because everybody is already on it: leaving. Japa is the honest answer to a question most of us will not ask out loud — that if I go far enough, I will arrive somewhere calm.
The hole stays, because these are answers to different questions. They change your circumstances. They do not touch the condition underneath.
Three things that have not changed The Bible names three, and however much we rearrange our lives they are still waiting for us.
Sin. Not primarily bad behaviour; the human habit of living as though God does not exist. All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). We dress this up as ambition, and it is why we cannot sit still.
Sorrow. Grief is not a failure of faith in your life. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:35) — the shortest verse in Scripture, and the most honest. Money in the account will not spare you one tear.
Death. The one appointment in Nigeria that nobody reschedules. It is appointed unto men once to die (Hebrews 9:27). We keep busy because stopping is what we cannot afford.
Peace with God, not peace of mind Here is where the Christian answer to how to find real peace differs from advice of any kind. It does not begin by telling you to do more. It begins by telling you what has already been done. Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1). You were not made to be repaired. You were made to be reconciled.
What people hear in that is a trade: gain God, lose the world you have worked for. It is worth saying plainly that this is not the exchange. Nobody who comes to Christ gives up rest, pleasure or honesty; they give up pretending. And what is offered is a peace that survives the thing that was always going to happen to you.
Political freedom is good. Education is excellent. A better salary is worth pursuing, and so is the passport if the door opens honestly. But none of them reach where the emptiness actually sits. And so the offer is not a better routine; it is a Person, who is the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever (Hebrews 13:8) — the only fixed thing in a country where everything else changes without warning. Real peace is received, not achieved.
How to find real peace: tomorrow morning Stop running from the question. Put it in front of God while the house is still quiet. He has promised to be found: And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart (Jeremiah 29:13). Take that verse at its word and test it for a month, honestly, before you decide it is a myth. Tell one person. Faith that stays private is not what you are describing when you say you are searching. Come to the Monday morning prayer line, or read start your journey — it is six steps, and the first one costs nothing but the asking. Bring what you are carrying. Financial pressure, illness, a family nobody prays with anymore — get help here. If you are carrying something dangerous, grief or thoughts of ending your life, tell a pastor, a trusted friend, or go to a hospital. Do not carry that alone. Can peace be this simple? Simple, yes. Easy, no. Searching with your whole heart is the one thing most of us will not do. Ye shall seek me, and find me.
Doesn't what is happening in Nigeria make God irrelevant? It makes a great many things irrelevant — fuel prices, salaries, government. It does not remove the God who says Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28). Editor's note: the outline of this piece — the false paths people are told will bring happiness, the unchanging realities of sin, sorrow and death, and an unchanging Christ — follows the argument of a book we have been reading as a church. The words, the illustrations and the Lagos are our own. Scripture is from the King James Version.